


that part is a whole

by bookhobbit



Category: Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell - Susanna Clarke
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Period-Typical Homophobia, Screw Destiny, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, Soulmates - Deconstructed, implied polyamory, or i mean i hope so
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-23
Updated: 2016-04-23
Packaged: 2018-06-04 01:28:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,261
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6635434
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bookhobbit/pseuds/bookhobbit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arabella Woodhope is not Jonathan Strange's soulmate, and John Childermass isn't Gilbert Norrell's.</p><p>All the same, they make it work.</p>
            </blockquote>





	that part is a whole

**Author's Note:**

> Have some more fic?? I'm back at it again with the posting things two days in a row, I am so sorry. I don't usually really like soulmate AUs but I LOVE taking established romantic tropes and shaking them up so here we are.
> 
> As usual with help from Moll. Most of the best lines are her idea, particularly the bit about the tattoo. This may or may not also be set in the same universe as her [another story of the one you lost](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6352216/chapters/14552389).

John Childermass thought for the first twelve years of his life that he was his own soulmate. But then, handwriting on his wrist isn’t his.

When he’s sixteen and a sailor he decides that he wants no part of this. The entire song and dance of love is tedious and dull and _wrong_  and he’s grown to hate it; his few fleeting attempts, mostly with other Johns, have made him feel torn up and hollow inside.

There’s a tattooist among the men, and Childermass saves his pay until he can scratch out the money for a raven to cover up one John with another.

By the time he makes it to Hurtfew Abbey he’s more or less forgotten about his mark, which isn’t _quite_  covered by the raven-and-rope.

 

The name on Arabella’s wrist isn’t ‘Jonathan’. The name on Jonathan’s wrist isn’t ‘Arabella’.

But that doesn’t matter, really; she loves him and he loves her and isn’t that the important part? Arabella has never understood the idea that some sort of magic is meant to dictate your future with another human being, because love is complicated. As for Jonathan, well, Jonathan is mercurial and contrary and rather enjoys thwarting people, so she can only suppose that he is pleased enough.

The truth is that it’s safer for them to be married to each other. Arabella’s name is undeniably a woman’s, and Jonathan’s is undeniably a man’s. Should anyone find out they would both be decried as unnatural.

But the truth is also that Arabella would rather be with him than anyone, even the hypothetical bearer of the name on her wrist. He makes her laugh.

Fortunately it is not the custom to show non-intimates one’s soulname. Asking a married couple if they are soulmates is the height of rudeness, and of course polite people keep their wrists covered. So they are safe.

Arabella never really wants anything else, never really wishes she could find the lady she is supposed to be destined for. She sometimes thinks that perhaps she is dead, and Jonathan is all she has.

She is content with that.

 

Norrell asks him, once - “Is John short for anything?”

“No,” he tells him, rolling over on the bed, sleepily nuzzling at Norrell’s shoulder. “Any reason it should?”

There’s a long pause. “No,” says Norrell, “I was just curious.”

There’s odd harmonics in that but they’re both halfway to sleep, curled up together, and Childermass is too tired to pursue it.

Later Hannah, in her usual ridiculous fashion, calls him “Jonathan Francis Childermass” in Norrell’s hearing. Childermass is busy rolling his eyes, but he notices how Norrell’s breath catches and he blinks.

“Is that your real name?” Norrell asks.

Childermass shakes his head. “She likes to makes things up. Says mine isn’t long enough to yell properly. My mam named me after the Raven King.”

“Oh,” says Norrell. He looks disappointed. Childermass thinks he knows why.

He has never seen Norrell’s wrist, and Norrell has not yet seen his. This way, they can pretend.

 

Henry smiled when she finally married Jonathan. It was a strained sort of smile. As a minister, he disapproves of marriages between non-soulmates; it is, he has said, against God’s plan. He himself plans to wait until he finds his one true love, no matter how long that takes. He tells Arabella this at least once per visit.

But of course he disapproves even more of her unnatural mark. She knows if he could rewrite the name on her wrist, he would, God’s plan or not. It’s always seemed like an odd conflict to her; if divine will has ordained everyone’s true beloved, then how can hers possibly be wrong?

She tells herself, firmly, that the question will not concern her. She’s married, and everyone will assume Jonathan is her intended, and that will be the end of it.

(If she wonders a little about Emma’s hair, Emma’s voice, Emma’s smile, well, no-one can blame her, can they?)

 

“I don’t care,” Norrell tells him once, whispering fiercely into his skin. “I don’t care, I don’t care.”

It’s just after Norrell has accidentally seen Childermass’s mark, that neat, tidy, schoolmasterish 'John’ not quite hidden by his tattoo. His face had gone blank for a moment, and then he turned away, shoulders stiff and shaking.

Childermass had touched his arm and Norrell had flinched, turned back, and kissed Childermass. It was perhaps the most _vehement_  kiss Childermass has ever received. Full of anger, he had thought, but not at him - more at an entire world that is set up so that what they have means nothing to anyone but them.

And Childermass had answered it, had cupped Norrell’s face in his hands and stroked a thumb over his cheekbone, trying to communicate without words that this was important, no matter what old magic may say about their destinies. Childermass has seen so much of Norrell, his pettiness and his rage and his passion and his vulnerability, and he will not, he will _not_ , give that up.

He tells him later, “I don’t care either. It doesn’t matter. Either way, neither of us will ever have marriage and a family, so I don’t see why we shouldn’t have each other.”

Norrell sighs and hides his face in Childermass’s neck.

Neither of them know what love is, Childermass thinks. But what they have is enough.

 

When they come to London, Jonathan tells her, “Sir Walter Pole’s wife is an Emma.”

“It can’t be the same one,” she says. “Me! Soulmate to a lady!”

Jonathan’s eyes sparkle with mirth. “I certainly think you are a prize worthy of any peer of the realm.”

She laughs and slaps his arm. “You are hardly an unbiased judge, Jonathan.”

“Perhaps you should talk to her.”

Arabella shakes her head. “I love you,” she says. “I don’t need anyone else.”

“I would hate for you to miss your opportunity.”

She takes his head and squeezes it. “I haven’t,” she says.

 

Childermass hears 'Jonathan Strange’ and he smiles wryly.

Perhaps it was inevitable after all that something inside Norrell should light up for another man’s magic. Perhaps this is how it was meant to be.

But he is not giving up just yet.

 

Neither of them talk about the fact that Norrell’s first name is Gilbert, or that Jonathan’s soulmark is written in tiny, neat handwriting that could be no one else’s. Jonathan doesn’t seem to want to discuss it.

She supposes it’s only natural given how much of their first meeting was spent quarreling. Arabella had always supposed that soul mate meetings would be electrifying and yet tender, sweet and lighting-fast and deep. But that is certainly not in either Jonathan or Norrell’s natures.

 

The point is that if the two of them admitted their feelings, if they admitted to the name on their wrists, it would be admitting defeat. They dance around the issue, never quite speaking of it, for the entire period of their acquaintanceship.

At war, Jonathan writes Norrell letters that begin 'sir, I think you should know that - ’ and tears them up before he gets any farther. Norrell drafts a thousand speeches in his head, moments where he unbuttons his cuff and shows Jonathan. Both of them spin fancies and hypothetical conversations that never, ever come to be.

And then they break apart, and there are no more chances to say it.

 

When Arabella leaves for Shropshire, she goes to see Emma one last time.

“I hope your ladyship will remember me,” she says, smiling shyly. “I have enjoyed our talks.”

Emma’s smile in return is weary. “I am unlikely to forget,” she says. She reaches over to arrange the blankets, and the motion pushes her delicate lace cuff up.

For a moment, Arabella glimpses her own name in her own handwriting, and her heart stops.

And then she bids her goodbye and goes out to her husband, because it makes no difference.

 

When Jonathan leaves, Childermass can feel Norrell pulling away from him. He can feel all of Norrell’s anger and fear and worry, but he cannot touch it, not any more. Norrell is guarded in a way he never was before.

Sometimes Childermass catches him staring at his wrist as if he’d like to exorcise something written there.

 

In the darkness of Lost-hope, Arabella holds Emma’s hand. There is warmth in her. There is so little warmth elsewhere.

 

When the houses disappear and take the magicians with them, Childermass can’t help but feel that Jonathan Strange has won after all.

 

(Somewhere in Faerie two men bare their wrists and turn them outward toward each other. This tells them nothing they do not already know. They have felt drawn together, two halves of some jagged, broken, imperfect whole, for a long time, and there are worse things to be.

Both of them miss the people they have left behind. Neither of them speak of that.)

 

Emma has exactly the same sort of bright ferocity that Jonathan has when he’s switched on at something. Arabella thinks rather wryly that she must have a type.

And her hand is still warm. The absence of Jonathan has caused a - draft, as it were, in Arabella’s heart, and she always feels a little bit adrift now. Emma is an anchor, solid at her side.

“I loved him,” she tells Emma, curled up against her in bed one night.

Emma strokes her hair. “I know,” she says. “I do not think it is in your nature to feel half-way about anyone.”

“Did you love Walter?” Arabella asks.

“Oh, no. He had no mark and I had an unacceptable one. It was convenience, pure and simple.”

Arabella sighs. “Sometimes I wish mine had been. But - no, I cannot truly. I was happy, you know.”

Emma pulls her very close. “I wish I could make it so that you were happy now.”

Arabella kisses her shoulder. “I am, my love. I have my sorrows, but truly I do love you too. Never doubt that. Without you, I do not think I would have survived being under the earth.”

“I would tear heaven and earth apart to keep you safe,” says Emma. “I would have killed that fairy rather than let him keep you, had I been able.”

“I know,” says Arabella.

Emma kisses her, and thoughts of anything but each other soon seem very far away.

 

It takes Childermass a truly embarrassing amount of time to realize that John Segundus is _the_ John. In truth he had gravitated into his orbit by accident. Segundus is full of magic - among the first of a new breed of magicians, like Childermass - and kind and compassionate, and Childermass has had nowhere else to go.

And so he stays at Starecross, and so, very gently, Segundus begins to piece him back together again.

The striking thing about Segundus is this. When Childermass confesses to him - tired of secrets, and needing to speak his mind - that he and Norrell had cared for each other, but had not been intended for each other, he had shrugged.

“But love is love,” he had said softly, “And pain is pain. I am sorry you are hurting.”

Somehow, Childermass _still_  doesn’t realize until he happens to glance at some outgoing mail and reads the words _from John Segundus_.

He stops cold. That tidy, neat, schoolmasterish handwriting…

He finds Segundus, and, wordlessly, hands a little more unsteady than he would like them to be, rolls up his sleeve.

Segundus smiles a little sadly.

“You knew,” says Childermass.

Segundus nods and rolls up his own sleeve; sure enough, it has 'John’ too, written in Childermass’s own handwriting.

“How long?” asks Childermass, sitting down.

“Since the day at the cathedral. I saw you edit the contract, and, well, you make your Js in a very distinctive way.”

“But you never said?”

Segundus shrugged. “When would I have? I know you loved him. I would hate to have interfered with that, you know. And then you were mourning his loss, and there has been no good time.”

Childermass sighs. He feels strangely cheated by the universe. It’s not that Segundus is not an excellent companion, and it is not that he doesn’t care for him. It is more the sense that he has been maneuvered into something greater than himself quite against his will. It makes him very angry.

He says, “Perhaps you cannot win against destiny. Perhaps I was always going to lose him. Perhaps it never meant anything at all.”

Segundus looks at the floor for a while, and then ventures, timidly, “I often wonder if what we called soul mates are not our greatest loves, but our last. The person we will die with, or who will die with us. But that does not make any other love unimportant.”

 

“I’m going to get him back,” says Arabella to Childermass one day.

“Is that a prediction or a promise?” says Childermass.

Arabella shrugs. “I do not know yet.”

Childermass looks into his tea. “If it is the latter, I will help you. I…have unfinished business with Mr Norrell.”

“Yes,” says Arabella, “I suppose you do.”

How she could possibly know he can’t tell, but after that, there is a silent understanding that they are a team.

 

In a schoolhouse in Yorkshire two magicians step through a mirror, and collapse into the waiting arms of lovers who, by rights, shouldn’t be there at all.

Perhaps you can’t win against destiny.

But sometimes, if you’re careful and tenacious and refuse to back down, you can argue it into a compromise.


End file.
